Boy, Are We Thankful…

that we won’t hear these phrases over the holiday weekend

On Thanksgiving, we fully intend to devour some turkey, watch football and slip into a deep food coma. Needless to say, this time of year makes us so thankful for pants with elastic waistbands. And whether you care to admit this or not, you are also thankful for such luxuries!

Elastic waistbands aside, we have a lot to be thankful for this year:

We’re thankful for the opportunity to be creative everyday. We’re thankful for getting to do things the average person doesn’t have the chance to experience, like going behind the scenes at the zoo or capturing the power of a semi-truck while creating recruitment videos. We’re also thankful for the opportunity to partner with some great organizations in the community.

There is so much to be grateful for. And, of course, we are endlessly thankful for our clients who challenge us to create concepts and campaigns that make an impact, both locally and beyond.

As the holidays approach, it’s humbling to take a moment and reflect on what we are truly thankful for… like four day weekends when we don’t have to hear certain advertising buzzwords and catchphrases that haunt our daily existence.

We’re just saying…

Sometimes it’s the frustrating amount of ambiguity and sometimes we’re just being cranky, but here are a few phrases we will be happy to live without… if only for the long weekend:

Make it pop — What we do is not akin to those weird turkey thermometers that “pop” when the bird reaches a certain internal cooking temperature. While we understand the intention when we’re told to “Make it pop!” it’s the ambiguity that gnaws at us. “Pop what?” “Where’s the popping?” A little direction please!

Frankenstein ‘em — Let’s draw on a Thanksgiving staple for how this comment makes us feel. Let’s say we made stuffing and presented it to our dinner guests who then reply: “We like this stuffing, but could you add the whipped cream topping from the pumpkin pie? We like that too.” What we try to do with our creative work is like making stuffing: we blend the ingredients (copy, design, social, printing, etc.) to produce something cohesive and delicious. It’s not just throwing in a bunch of ingredients, even if we like them individually, to see what sticks. Ingredients in different recipes aren’t interchangeable and neither are the elements in an ad concept.

Do some wordsmithing — It’s impossible not to picture a bearded man from the Middle Ages with an apron, hammer and anvil (probably standing next to a horse) when anyone adds the suffix “-smithing” to any word. And while writing is a challenging task, one that, at times, makes us want to hit things with a hammer… it’s usually not a molten hot piece of metal. And certainly not in proximity to a horse. And usually we just write through our challenges — draft after draft — rather than forging steel from fire. Although that does sound pretty cool!

Massage it — This is really just a creepy way of saying, “Make it better.” But in keeping with the Thanksgiving theme, let’s picture someone massaging spices into an uncooked turkey. It’s a crucial part of the cooking process. With advertising concepts, however, saying “massage it” is equivalent to telling a chef who presents you with a cooked turkey to “work on the spices” after the bird has been cooked.

It’s not you… it’s us

If you’ve said one of these phrases to us, don’t be embarrassed or feel shame. In fact, perhaps it is us who should feel the shame for not presenting you a 110% awesome concept the first time. And, with some self-reflection, we might acknowledge this… but probably not. At least we got it off our chest and we’re thankful for that.